Dayton Days Two and Three Detailed

Going to Hamvention is not a vacation in the sense that I can relax. Staffing a booth requires being up and running at the booth when the show opens. So just as if I was going to my day job, I was up at 5 AM to shave, shower, and dress and then add 30 to 45 minutes to do my makeup.

On Friday, I wore one of my new dresses from Fashion to Figure... a figure-hugging black and white sheath. Accessories included black thigh-highs from Berkshire, black patent "Janine" pumps from Payless, jewelry from Avon and Fashion Bug, and a black bag from Payless. I also brought along a pair of mid-heel black "Daylight" wedges from Payless in case the 3-inch Janine pumps wore out their welcome.

On Saturday, I wore my navy blue white polka dot dress from Avon with basically the same accessories as Friday except I wore a pearl necklace and white watch instead of a silver necklace and black watch.

On both days, I left my room and walked down the hall to the hotel restaurant at approximately 7 AM (my room was on the first floor just off the lobby). Found an empty table and had a banana, yogurt, and coffee while I people-watched the people who watched me when I entered the restaurant.

Nothing grabs the attention of a room full of guys like the sound of high heels entering the room. Everyone (even the women) stop what they are doing to see who is the source of that oh-so feminine sound and in this case, it happened to be me.

The same thing happened in the convention hall --- the sound of high heels acts like a siren to alert everyone to the presence of a siren.

I was one of the few people at the show in heels. Other women who staff booths wear sensible shoes unless they are "booth babes" and I don't recall seeing any "booth babes" at the show this year, so I might have been the only one in heels. By the way, I wore the heels all day. They were very comfortable and I never had to fall back to my wedges.

After breakfast, I returned to my room to freshen up and then returned to the lobby to meet up with the fellow who I would carpool with Friday and Saturday (he drove during the day and I drove at night). We arrived at the convention hall at about 8 AM and got ready for the throngs that would appear when the hall opened to the public at 9 AM.

I still run into old friends and acquaintances at Hamvention who are not aware of Stana and there were four instances of this occurrence over the weekend that were interesting. In all four cases, I had known the fellows for at least 10 to 15 years and in one case, it was over 40 years.

Three of the four guys acted exactly the same when they saw me, that is, they acted as if nothing was different. They were just as friendly as they had been in the past and chatted with me like old friends chat when they have not seen each other in awhile. The three made no mention of my change. It is possible that they were already aware of my change before encountering me in person, but nonetheless, they seemed to have no problem with it.

The fourth fellow was a little different. He was just as friendly and chatty as the other three, but he was genuinely excited about my transformation and specifically wanted to know the source of my shapely legs (blame my Mother).

Most of my old friends and acquaintances have acted in a similar manner. They accepted me as a friend before the change and now they found that same friend after the change (maybe a little more attractive than before the change), but the same friend nonetheless.

Strangers are different matter and most of the people I encountered over the weekend were strangers. Strangers are not aware of my past. When they see me they see someone presenting as a tall woman, so they assume that I am a tall woman until I give them evidence that is contrary to that presentation. For example, a couple of times I inadvertently slipped into my normal male voice and I realized what had happened when I noticed strangers  noticing the discrepancy between my voice and the rest of my presentation.

Standing in the booth, I had a smile pasted on my face most of the time. Many men and almost all the women who came my way returned the smile with some even adding a "Hi" or "Hello."

And two women even came over to say, "I love your dress!"

I love that!

 

 

 

B. Scott, the beautiful femulating TV, radio and Internet personality

 

 

 

Wearing Kamalikulture.

Dayton Days Zero and One Detailed

Wednesday (Dayton Day Zero)

Wednesday was a travel day in boy mode because I left home as early as possible to beat the bad weather.

Except for two short downpours in central Pennsylvania, the weather on the first leg of the trip was fine for driving.  I drove 7-1/2 hours and stayed at a hotel on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border;  when I exited my car at the hotel, I was surprised by the heat and humidity. The temperature was in the high 80's and the humidity was in the same neighborhood.

After I settled into my hotel room, all hell broke loose. The sky turned black and there was a thundershower with pea-sized hail. A cold front blew through and the temperature dropped and stayed low throughout the Hamvention (I woke up to sub-40 degree temps each morning in Dayton).  And it rained off and on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

I did not expect the low temperatures and all the outfits I packed were sleeveless. Luckily I had brought a trench coat and hoody!

Thursday (Dayton Day One)

Up at 5 AM (as usual), I shaved, showered and did my makeup.

My makeup collection is contained in a big tackle box that I bought years ago. It has everything I need, but do I need everything?

I was determined to make an effort to keep track of exactly what I used throughout the weekend so that in the future, I could travel a little lighter makeup wise.

Thursday, I wore my new black jumpsuit from Fashion to Figure, nude 3-inch high heels from Payless, and accessorized with jewelry and a nude bag from Avon. Also, I wore a new do for the first time (Meredith from Henry Margu). Its color is "Gold Blonde with Glazed Strawberry Blonde Highlights."

I checked myself out in the full-length mirror, thought to myself, "Yes - you are a woman,"  took a deep breath, opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.

The hallway was deserted.

I pressed the button for the elevator. When it arrived, a young couple were already on board. Since I was on the top floor of the hotel, I waited for them to exit.

When they realized what I was doing, they motioned for me to get on board. Turned out that they were going down, too, but got on the elevator from the floor below when it was going up to get me. When the elevator went down and stopped at the next floor, I joked, "This is where you get on."

They laughed at my little joke. When we arrived at the lobby, they let the funny old lady (me) get off first.

I went to the dining area and there were two couples seated and eating. A senior gent from one of the couples watched me intently while I selected the items for my breakfast (yogurt, fruit and coffee). I think he wanted a date, but all they had were apples and oranges.

I ate while watching the news on the television. There was a tornado that did some destruction overnight elsewhere in Ohio. I was not surprised considering the kind of weather that I saw in my neck of the woods Wednesday evening.

After breakfast, I returned to my room to freshen up, moved my bags to my car and checked out. This was the potential exciting part because I checked in presenting as a male, but I was checking out presenting as a female.

The potential for excitement would be even higher if the same person who checked me in was working the front desk when I checked out, but she was a no-show. The fellow working the desk was the same fellow who was working the desk when I checked out last year (I have stayed at the same hotel three years in a row). He was polite as could be, used the correct pronouns and gave away no hints that he knew anything was amiss.

There was no excitement until I got back on the Interstate and encountered a deluge just north of Columbus. The rain was falling so heavily for a minute or so that visibility was next to zero, so I slowed down to a crawl until the rain let up a bit.

I arrived at my hotel in Dayton and checked in. Liz, a very young lady was working the front desk and she was as accommodating as could be. She did not bat an eye when I asked her to change the name on my reservation because there was an error (a male first name - how did that happen!) --- I wanted the name on the reservation to match the name (Stana) on my Hilton Honors Awards card.

After checking in, I moved my luggage to the room and relaxed while reading my e-mails. After an hour, I was bored, so I moved to the lobby to people-watch while reading my e-mails. Most of the people I watched were fellow board members of my group who were either staying in the hotel or were showing up early for our 6 PM board meeting.

My iPhone rang and it was another board member who was in charge of paying the bills for the meeting. He called to ask me if I, as the group's secretary, knew if anyone had arranged for food for the board meeting. No one had, so he met me in the lobby to discuss the matter while looking over menus of local food providers. We quickly made an executive decision to order apizza and salad.

After  returning to my room to get a cold drink and freshen my makeup, I proceeded to the meeting room for the board meeting. I greeted the two board members, who were already present, then took a seat. One-by-one, the other board members arrived and the meeting got underway after everyone had a chance to get salad and apizza.

I will not go into details about the board meeting except to say that everyone who knew me before femulation treated me as they always have. The only difference was that they now use different pronouns (and they have become very good at doing that).

On the other hand, the two newcomers at the meeting, who did not know the old me, did not have to use new pronouns and they treated me as a woman because that's all they know.

 

 

 

Actor Anthony Berry femulating on British television’s Coronation Street in 2007.

 

 

 

Wearing Lafayette 148 New York.

Dayton Day Four

After 12 hours on 710 miles of bad road, I arrived home, unloaded the car and went to bed.

I have a lot of catching up to do and will get to it as quickly as possible. Until then, I leave you with today’s installment of Lila (she and I were separated at birth!).

Dayton Day Three

I got back from the Hamvention about an hour ago, packed my bags for the trip home on Sunday and before I crash, I am posting a photo of the outfit I wore last night (a peplum dress from Fashion to Figure).

I will be on the road for about 12 hours tomorrow. When I get back home, I will write all about my trip and post it here.

Until then, 88!

Dayton Day Two

Today was busy from start to finish. I am ready to turn out the lights and rest up for another busy day on Saturday.

Like yesterday, I will leave you with a photo of the outfit I wore today. The photo was taken a few minutes before 9 AM when the doors opened to let in 20,000 attendees.

Dayton Day One

It was a very busy and full day today. Tomorrow will be even busier at Hamvention.

I am going to bed now because I have to get up early, but I will leave you with this photo of the outfit I wore today.

Ohio is not a palindrome

I traveled 7-1/2 hours today and I am staying in a hotel in eastern Ohio for the night. On to Dayton and Hamvention in the morning.

Not much to say about the day femulation-wise. I did not travel en femme because I left home as early as possible to beat the bad weather that was in the forecast and that I did.

I will dress en femme in the morning, have breakfast and then check out of the hotel as a woman, which is always interesting after having checked into the hotel as a guy!

Traveling Pretty

Today, I am on the road traveling to Dayton, Ohio, to attend Hamvention. As Kimberly of Traveling Transgendered fame often says when she travels en femme, I am traveling pretty and I will also be attending the convention pretty. My dance card is pretty full for the next four days, so I cannot predict how often I will be able to post to the blog, but I do know I will have a lot to write about after I return Sunday night. Also, Monica M’s series, “One Person's Journey to Womanhood,” will resume after I return. By the way, I will be staffing the TAPR suite of booths (numbers 451 through 454) off and on during Friday and Saturday. If you are going to the convention, stop by and say “Hello!”

 

 

 

Johanna Arrow, a Femulate reader from Sweden.

 

 

 

Wearing Naven.

Out in Cuba

My Fantasia Fair buddy, Mariette Pathy Allen, has a new beautiful photobook. Titled TransCuba, it "focuses on the transgender community of Cuba, especially its growing visibility and acceptance in a country whose government is transitioning into a more relaxed model of communism under Raúl Castro's presidency."

Mother Jones' interesting review of TransCuba includes eight photos from the book; you can view the review here.

I own Mariette's previous transgender photobooks and plan to buy TransCuba at Fantasia Fair so that she can personally autograph it for me.

 

 

 

A professional femulator appears on an early 20th Century Cuban tobacco card.

 

 

 

Wearing Elie Tahari.

Dyke is a Four-Letter Word!

My post here last Monday, Tranny is Not a Four-Letter Word!, received a mixed reception. Some people agreed with me... that the trans community should reclaim the word "tranny" from the slanderers, while other people disagreed with me, don't want anything to do with the word and insist that everyone should stop using it.

Which brought to mind something that happened to me when I was in New York City a few years ago. I was en femme walking up Fifth Avenue near Rockefeller Center on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in June. Approaching me were a group of three or four high school-aged guys. I did not pay much attention to them, but as we passed each other, one of the guys shouts out, "Dyke," referring to me.

Although some lesbian groups have tried to reclaim it, the last time I looked it up, dyke was still generally considered "a derogatory label for a masculine woman."

I assumed that the guy thought he was insulting me, but little did he know that calling me a “dyke” was high praise and an affirmation of my womanhood. Sure, I would have preferred to be called "femme," but being regarded as a masculine woman is a lot better than being regarded as a guy in a dress! After all, I was presenting as feminine as I could manage while constrained by my Amazonian size.

I always present as feminine as possible. I have invested a lot of time and money into my presentation and I think it pays off because I seldom get called out as a guy in a dress. I do get a lot of looks and you can never be sure if they are looking because you are looking good or because you are looking trans. I am sure my presentation confuses some, but I believe that my presentation is good enough so that the confused are not sure what's really in my panties.

Dyke is as bad as it ever gets and that is actually pretty good!

 

 

 

Actor David Drake femulating on stage in My Tawny Valentine, 2012.

 

 

 

Wearing Trina Turk.

One Person's Journey to Womanhood – Part 9

By Monica M

On a vacation to London in 2005, I finally plucked up courage to go and have a professional makeover. My desire to be Monica (I had the name by then; how I decided on this name has, however, been lost in the mists of time) had increased steadily since the turn of the century. As my testosterone started to run out, I more and more wanted to spend time as the woman I knew I should have been.

I chose two salons for my photoshoot: The Boudoir and Pandora de Pledge. Pandora is no longer with us unfortunately.

By this time, I had a small female wardrobe, but I still had not really tried makeup, I did not have a wig and I had never been out!

To the right is the first picture ever of me dressed.

I was the only customer at The Boudoir that day there and a very nice chap spent about an hour putting on the makeup and explaining it all to me. Even as he was doing it, I thought there is no way I am going to remember all this and sure enough, I was correct.

He chose a number of other outfits for me and photographed me in various poses. Looking back now, I definitely look more of a “guy in a dress” than a woman. However, it was another step on way. Success is built in small steps.

The following are some of the other photos from that day.

My next stop, a few days later, was the famous Pandora de Pledge.

 

One of her assistants did the makeover. He had me sit facing away from the mirror and then when he had finished the makeup and put the wig on me, he turned me around to see myself in the mirror. I nearly cried. It was the first time I really did see the woman in me.

However, there was one embarrassing incident. They had in a second client while I was there. I was so nervous in those days that I was really angry, though I did not say anything. What if that person was somebody who knew me! I did not think about the fact that it was probably equally embarrassing for him!

 

And just to round it off, here is the last photoshoot image of me taken in Denver in April 2014 nearly 10 years later!

(Part 8 of One Person’s Journey to Womanhood appeared here yesterday.)

 

 

 

Fellows femulating in a minstrel show in Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1931.

 

 

 

Wearing Shoshanna.

One Person's Journey to Womanhood – Part 8

By Monica M

For me, being trapped in a male body was never something I thought about. It was foreign to me when I first heard of it in the ‘90s. I knew I was female or that I should be female. I remember from my childhood various schemes and dreams of how I did or might become a woman. Needless to say, none of them worked.

With the wisdom of maturity, I now realize why I rejected the idea of being trapped in a man's body. I realized that if I am trapped, then like some princess in a tower, I needed somebody to come and rescue me. That did not really gel with me. That gave the power to other people and took the solution out of my hands.

After musing on this topic for some time, I realized that really I am a woman with a man's body. Some women have green eyes, some women have red hair, some women have birthmarks… I am a woman who happens to have a male body. Given that this is the situation, I had to find ways to accommodate this and live within the expectations that have grown up around it.

To be morbid for a moment, I see from the suicide figures that women who had been through SRS do not necessarily have a happier and more fulfilled life than those who did not. So this got me thinking... sure, every woman has a vagina, but not all those with vaginas are women or at least, not accepted as women. Maybe for some the “vag is not the badge.” Maybe there is more!

Thinking about it from a mechanical perspective, you can boil a women (and men) down (sorry that is a bad choice of words) into two components: the hardware and the software. The hardware is obvious, but the software has four components: voice, movement, presentation and internal operating system.

I am guessing that what drives a lot of people to drugs, drink, despair, and suicide is the lack of connection and support from other people especially other women. Thinking along these lines helped me realize that maybe for some people SRS is seen as a quick an easy option to achieving womanhood. You pay some money (a lot of money in many cases!), do some time in hospital, and you are a woman.

In truth, nobody but yourself and your intimate partner cares about your hardware. How you interact with the outside world and make loving and supportive friends is through the software,

There are no guardians of the holy flame of femininity (sorry Elizabeth!) who grade us on how close we are to being woman. Femininity is bigger than any one person. No person encompasses the whole of the feminine. It is like the blind people and the elephant. One says an elephant is like a tree because he feels its leg. Another says it is like a rope because he feels the tail. The life experience of the black celibate Catholic nun, the white butch lesbian, and the physically abused Chinese mother of 10 are totally different with little in common. To claim that the common denominator is the vagina and that that is the ultimate mark of a woman is misogynistic to the extreme. As we know, only too well from our feminist history, a woman is far more than her genitals.

Who is or who is not a woman is determined in a very democratic way. The people you meet while you are out and about en femme are the people who determine if you are a woman or not. If you get read a lot, then you are not measuring up. If you make a number of close supportive and loving women friends who treat you like one of their own, then, for all that matters, you are a woman. You may not be in the main species of womanhood (however you define that), but you are certainly in one of the sub species and that for many of us, that is very acceptable.

(Part 7 of One Person’s Journey to Womanhood appeared here yesterday.)

 

 

 

Brian Molko, rocker and femulator.

 

 

 

Wearing Gregory Parkinson.

One Person's Journey to Womanhood – Part 7

By Monica M

In my thirties, I had a big purge. It was really the only purge that I did and the nylon wig went to its final resting place. I don't even remember why I purged; I think it was because I was moving.

Another thing that happened about that time was that I got into transcendental meditation. I meditated (I almost said religiously!) regularly and for a number of years, it worked for me. I don't think I crossdressed for about 5 years… what a waste! :)

Like most men, in my twenties and thirties, I was a keen watcher of women. But while most men wanted to get inside their panties, I wanted to get inside their panties in a totally different way! During the meditation days, even that stopped. So, maybe there is a cure! :)

In my late thirties, we moved to a new city and I dropped the meditation and, lo and behold, the old feelings gradually wound their way back into my psyche. As we did not have any kids, I was able to start indulging my hobby a bit more. Internet shopping was just about taking off and things started to change quickly in the wardrobe front. The “trashy tranny” phase was over and a more bohemian style took its place.

We both lived about 20 minutes away from our workplaces and one of the funnier incidents I remember from that time was when I was working from home one day. I decided to try on one of my wife's more formal dresses that she had not worn for a long time. We are similar in size, but not that similar. This was a dress that she had bought for a wedding and never really liked it afterwards. Being bored and wanting a break from my work, I decided to try it on. I was still in my pre makeup days, so all I needed was a shower and some underwear.

I got the dress on no problem, but, as I zipped it up, the zipper got stuck half way. It was right in the middle of my back and I could just barely reach it, so I could not get it up or get it down. I knew I had two choices: either break the zip and suffer the wrath of my dear wife or call her to come home during lunch time and zip me out of the dress and suffer the wrath of my dear wife. I chose to call her. She was not very amused, but saw the funny side of it. We laugh about it now!

In my mid-forties, we moved again. But this time, to a small community. As I was not out nor going out, this was not an issue. I just had to make sure that the neighbors could not see anything through the windows while I was dressed and make sure that I did not answer the door if anybody came.

The first couple of times that anybody did come to the door, I rushed around getting my guy clothes on and making some excuse for why it took me so long to get to the door. One incident I remember is getting to the door, asking them to come in for coffee and as I am closing the door – fortunately while they had their backs to me – noticing that I still had my rings on. I stuffed my hand in my pocket and mumbled something about having to go to the bathroom.

Now I am much wiser, I don't answer the door. However, it can be very nerve-racking listening to people outside your door and ringing your bell while you are inside en femme.

In my late forties, I learned about professional makeovers and was determined to get one. When we went on holiday in 2004, not only did I get a professional makeover… I got two! Each one was done by a different salon. But more about that along with some photos next time.

(Part 6 of One Person’s Journey to Womanhood appeared here yesterday.)

 

 

 

A femulator in her kitchen.

 

 

 

Wearing Madeleine.